by Paul Doherty
Kathryn went to wash her hands in the lead sink in the buttery whilst Thomasina shooed the children out and gave instructions to the young maid. Kathryn picked up her cloak and the brooch bought by her husband, wrought with rubies and sapphires to form the inscription: ‘I am here in the place of a friend I love.’ Kathryn fastened the robe absent-mindedly. Thomasina looked on; beneath her bluff exterior she was anxious about her mistress. Kathryn’s husband had gone to the wars to disappear from the face of the earth. Had he run away? Thomasina wondered, or been killed and was buried in some mass grave? Alexander had been a personable young man, a good apothecary who had made an honest marriage with a doctor’s daughter. He and Kathryn had only been married for seven months when he had left to serve with Faunte’s troops in London.
So far Thomasina had kept her own counsel, but she had wondered if Alexander Wyville had been two people: the honest merchant and the drunken wife-beater. Thomasina had often heard her mistress’s cries and sobs. On one occasion she had even glimpsed Alexander, wild-eyed, white-faced, lurching along the passageway. The old physician had also known, but he was too aged to intervene, so he could only grieve. Three months after Alexander had left, the old doctor had died. Thomasina had hoped things would improve, but her mistress seemed subdued, as if guarding a terrible secret.
By a fairy’s tits! she thought. Why can’t she just declare herself a widow and marry again? I’ve been married three times. Thomasina smiled to herself. If any of her husbands had laid a finger on her, she would have thumped them.
‘Thomasina, why are you smiling?’
‘Oh, its nothing, Mistress. Let’s leave.’
Thomasina turned and shouted her orders at Agnes, then went down the passageway and out the front door into Ottemelle Lane. The day was proving to be a fine one and the sun was already baking the manure heaps; because of the disturbances in the city, the rakers had not been out and the sewers and cobbles were littered with festering garbage and reeking night-soil. At the corner of the lane, Rawnose the pedlar was standing with his tray slung around his neck by a tattered red ribbon. He called them over. Kathryn sighed and went across. She liked the old beggar ever since he had turned up asking her father’s assistance to sew his ears, badly cropped, after he had been caught stealing for the third time. Nonetheless, Rawnose was still as garrulous as a jackdaw.
‘You are well, Mistress? You have heard the news?’ Kathryn shook her head. Rawnose was better than any broadsheet.
‘Two nights ago a physician was found dead at the Checker Board Tavern, poisoned he was. Nicholas Faunte the mayor is still in hiding. He has been proclaimed a traitor by the King, who has now reached London. Oh, have you heard the news of the witch outside Rochester?’
Kathryn just smiled.
‘Died and had her body sewn in the hide of a stag. She was sheeted in a stone coffin, placed in the church and fifty psalms sung over it, but the Devil still came for her. He broke open the coffin with his cloven foot and plucked up the old witch’s corpse, fastening it with hooks on his coal-black horse.’
‘You shouldn’t believe everything you hear,’ Thomasina interrupted.
Rawnose stared at Thomasina and licked his lips, boldly admiring her ample breasts and broad hips.
‘You’ll come for a drink with me, Thomasina?’
‘I’ll dance with the Devil first!’
Thomasina linked her arm through Kathryn’s and they went down an alley-way past the hovels of the poor. Kathryn could smell cabbage cooking, and through the open doors glimpsed the women in their homespun gowns carding and spinning wool. A few tiles in the centre of the earth-beaten floors served as a fireplace. A mass of rags in the corner was the communal bed, and the only ornament a rough-hewn crucifix. Children sat amongst dog turds chewing black bread rubbed with onion juice. Kathryn looked away and breathed a prayer. Sickness and plague would come, but she agreed with her father, a pupil of John Gaddesden, that such dirt, filth and poor food nourished epidemics, fevers and illnesses. They turned into Hethenman Lane, where the stalls were laid out on either side. The more powerful citizens strutted here: the men in their flounced jackets and tight multicoloured hose, their wives tucking up undershirts of silk away from the offal underfoot. Dressed in severe black taffeta and white veil, Widow Gumple flounced by them. Her nose and mouth wrinkled disdainfully at Kathryn, who smiled back.
‘She looks as if she wants to fart,’ Thomasina hissed, ‘but cannot do it.’
Kathryn giggled. ‘Have more charity, Thomasina.’
‘She’s a snotty-nosed bitch,’ Thomasina answered her, ‘who resents your work as a physician and because you won’t join her coterie of hypocrites in the vestry-house at Saint Mildred’s.’ Thomasina stopped and glared at the Widow Gumple’s retreating back.
‘She is a hypocrite,’ she repeated. ‘I have heard the stories of how she is sweet on a young student who gets well above her garters.’
‘Shush! Shush!’ Kathryn replied.
They walked on only to start at the red-haired figure which slipped from between the stalls. Kathryn quietly groaned and hoped the din of the market had drowned most of Thomasina’s more colourful curses. Goldere the clerk stood there, his plump spoilt face twisted into a grimace which was supposed to be a smile, whilst his bony white fingers ruffled back lank red hair. His face always reminded Kathryn of a dissolute child, with its bleary eyes, squat nose and twisted lips. She often wondered if there was something wrong with his inner juices, for his attempts to grow a beard and moustache were pathetic – soft downy hairs which, Thomasina claimed, if covered with cream, a cat could lick off.
‘Mistress Kathryn,’ Goldere simpered. ‘So pleased to see you. You are well?’
‘We are in a hurry,’ Thomasina spoke up.
‘Good morrow, Master Goldere,’ Kathryn added, stepping round him.
The clerk was not so easy to shake off but sidled up like a shadow. Kathryn tried not to wrinkle her nose at his sour smell.
‘I wish to call on you, Mistress. I have certain ailments.’
‘There are other healers, Master Goldere,’ Kathryn replied. ‘I am a leech and an apothecary, not your personal physician.’
‘Then perhaps you can join me for a sup or a bite to eat?’
‘Master Goldere, I am a married woman!’
‘Ah, and how is your husband? Is there any news?’
Kathryn looked away. Was Goldere the sender of the messages? she wondered.
‘There is gossip,’ Goldere continued maliciously. ‘Why do you not carry your husband’s name?’
Kathryn stopped, her eyes blazing. Goldere stepped nervously back.
‘Master Clerk,’ Kathryn whispered hoarsely. ‘You know the law. My husband, God assoil him, is probably dead. As his widow I can inherit, in my own name, his property. Now, sir, I bid you adieu!’
She swept on by, whilst Thomasina sidled up to Goldere.
‘Master Clerk,’ she whispered.
‘Yes,’ he rasped, frightened of this small but forbidding woman with her brown staring eyes in that white resolute face.
‘Master Goldere. Are your bowels in good order?’
The clerk whirled round, his hand going to the hose stretched across his buttocks.
‘I only wondered,’ Thomasina added. She smiled beatifically and followed her mistress.
They went up Crimelende Street and into the Poor Priests’ Hospital, a large two-storied stone building. Father Cuthbert the warden was waiting for them in his small oak-panelled chamber. He rose and warmly clasped Kathryn’s hand.
‘You are earlier than we expected, Mistress Swinbrooke.’
‘I have other business to attend, Father.’
‘Come, come!’
Father Cuthbert led her upstairs into a long hall of polished wood. Along each wall were carved bedsteads placed at right angles to the wall under long tracery windows filled with stained glass. Under the lofty timbered of the walls were washed with lime, which enhanced an impression of spa
ce and coolness. Kathryn always marvelled at the cleanliness of the place. The straw-filled mattresses were suspended on cords fastened to four posts to allow the air to circulate and keep the room sweet; the sick, ageing priests lay on feather-filled bolsters between clean sheets covered by heavy grey counterpanes.
Kathryn undid the basket Thomasina carried and handed Father Cuthbert a small jar.
‘This is saxifraga and parsley boiled in ale. It will ease Father Dunstan’s bladder stone. And Benedict still suffers from dysentery?’
The priest nodded, smiling at Kathryn’s business-like tones.
‘He must be kept on good gruel,’ Kathryn continued, ‘and fed on this.’ She handed over a second jar.
‘What is it?’
‘Honey and wheaten-meal boiled in salted fat with a little wax. It will help bind his stomach.’
‘What about payment?’ Father Cuthbert murmured.
‘As is customary. At the end of every month Thomasina will bring you a bill.’ Kathryn smiled. ‘I promise the cost won’t be heavy. All is well here, Father?’
The priest shrugged and glanced fleetingly at the very demure Thomasina.
‘Mistress Kathryn, death is inevitable. All we do is make the final meeting a little easier.’ His sad old eyes studied Kathryn. ‘You are well, Mistress Swinbrooke?’
Kathryn stared at this gentle priest. Cuthbert, in his grey sparse gown, with his humorous face and anxious eyes, always reminded Kathryn of a little mouse, full of the joys of spring but ever watchful. Should I tell him? Kathryn wondered. Would he shrive me of my sin? But how could she confess? How could she speak about a murder she couldn’t prove and, despite the seal of confession, what would their relationship be afterwards? She bit her lips. And what about her father, whom this priest had loved? Father Cuthbert had gone to her father’s deathbed and anointed his eyes, brow, mouth, hands and feet with holy oil. Cuthbert had shriven him and brought the sacrament for that last great journey. Kathryn blinked and looked away. Did the priest know?
Father Cuthbert also studied Kathryn. He felt the sadness in her and wished he could help. But how could he? He had bent his ear to hear her father’s last gasping phrases. He had glimpsed the terror in the man’s eyes and whispered back words of absolution, telling him to put his trust in God’s infinite compassion. Every morning Father Cuthbert remembered physician Swinbrooke at Mass and wondered how he could share the dead man’s secret with Mistress Kathryn. To do that he would have to break the seal of confession. The old priest had known Kathryn since she was a child, yet now they stood like strangers in this sun-washed hall. Even Thomasina, whom the priest had loved an eternity ago, seemed more distant and aloof.
‘I must be going,’ Kathryn muttered abruptly, so the priest ushered them out.
Chapter 2
As she and Thomasina left the hospital, Kathryn noticed her old nurse was quiet, as she invariably was when they met Father Cuthbert. Were the stories true? Kathryn wondered. She glanced sideways; Thomasina was as demure as a young lass, lost in some reverie. Had Thomasina been in love with the priest? Did she still love him?
Kathryn pressed Thomasina’s hand. ‘One day you should tell him,’ she murmured.
‘What, Mistress?’
‘The truth!’
‘I did once. I told him he was beautiful.’ Thomasina cleared her throat and blinked furiously. ‘He still is,’ she whispered, but her words were lost in the din of the crowd as they entered the High Street, which ran under the brooding mass of Canterbury Cathedral. The crowd was more dense here; stalls stood on either side of a thoroughfare packed with carts, horses and, of course, troops of pilgrims. Some of these were solitary, others in organised groups. Some were clad in everyday dress; others wore flat-brimmed hats, grey cloaks and carried staves and scrips. Most were from surrounding towns and villages. A few were professional pilgrim-walkers and bore on their hats and cloaks the scallop-shell of St James Compostella or the engraved palm indicating they had even been to Jerusalem in Outremer. It was a fairly usual sight, people streaming up into the grounds of the cathedral to visit Becket’s great shrine, but what caught Kathryn’s attention were the anxious groups of burgesses clustered on the steps of the Guildhall.
‘No need to ask what’s worrying them,’ Thomasina murmured.
Kathryn nodded. ‘The aldermen of the Corporation,’ she replied, ‘are finding out what it’s like to be on the losing side of a war.’
She pointed to the groups of soldiers, most of them covered in dust, their faces tired and lined with exhaustion. Edward of York’s soldiers, fresh from victory in the West Country and eager to stamp their King’s authority on this now disgraced city. The livery of York could be seen everywhere, soldiers wearing the White Rose or the Red Boar of Gloucester, the King’s brother. Many of their citizens, eager to show their allegiance, had plucked white roses from their gardens and sported them in their beaver hats. A few of the leading burgesses’ wives even wore them in their hair. As Kathryn and Thomasina climbed the Guildhall steps, they were roughly jostled by the King’s soldiers streaming out, carrying chests full of documents, whilst a royal herald nailed a list of proscribed citizens, now judged traitors by the King, on the Guildhall door.
Kathryn and Thomasina entered the musty darkness of the Guildhall. They were immediately challenged by a royal serjeant who had an ugly bruise under his right eye and a suppurating cut on his left hand.
‘What’s your business?’ he snapped.
A group of soldiers farther down the corridor heard the tone of his voice and approached to watch the sport.
‘I am an apothecary, a physician,’ Kathryn answered. ‘Alderman Newington has asked to see me.’ She swallowed to hide her own nervousness. ‘You look tired,’ she continued and took the serjeant’s hand, turning it over carefully to examine it. The soldier, surprised, responded like a child.
‘It hurts,’ he murmured.
‘It will hurt more,’ Kathryn replied. ‘If it goes septic, you will lose the hand.’
‘What can I do?’
‘Cleanse it with hot water. Infuse a little salt and a dash of wine mixed with vinegar. It will make you scream, but at least it will save your hand. Keep it covered with a bandage and repeat the process twice a day.’
‘You are sure?’ he asked, snatching Kathryn’s letter from her hand. He held it upside down, pretending to read it.
‘My name is Swinbrooke,’ Kathryn added. ‘I live in Ottemelle Lane. If your hand does not heal within three days, come and see me.’
The soldier gave a gap-toothed smile, his dull eyes sparkling into life.
‘I will do that, Mistress.’
‘Keep your dirty thoughts to yourself!’ Thomasina interrupted. ‘Mistress Swinbrooke is an apothecary and a doctor, not one of your camp followers!’
The soldier leered at Thomasina. ‘It’s you I’m after,’ he teased. ‘I like my women fat. Plenty to hold on to when the going gets rough!’
‘I’ve pulled bigger things out of my nose!’ Thomasina snapped back.
The soldier threw his head back and roared with laughter. ‘I like them saucy,’ he replied.
‘Oliver, be careful!’ one of his companions shouted. ‘The Irishman expects these two.’
The serjeant quickly sobered up and stepped back. ‘I thank you, Mistress. You had better hurry on.’
At the end of the passageway, through a milling crowd of frightened clerks, timorous burgesses and loud-mouthed soldiers, Kathryn met the alderman from her own ward, John Abchurch.
‘Sir,’ she cried out. ‘Can you assist me?’
The plump little man turned. ‘Mistress Swinbrooke. Of course. You should not be here.’ He pulled his wool-lined cloak around him and edged closer. ‘Troubled times, these. Faunte, God damn him, supporting the Lancastrians.’
‘What will happen?’
‘Faunte will lose his head or his balls. Probably both, and the city will have to pay a fine. Well’ – Abchurch wetted his lips – ‘what
do you want?’
‘Alderman Newington wants to see me.’
‘Come!’
Eager to escape the throng, Abchurch led them upstairs, along a quiet, deserted passageway, and tapped on a huge iron-barred door.
‘Come in!’
Kathryn pushed the door open, even as Abchurch scuttled away like a rabbit. Inside the room was cool and, because the window shutters were open, bathed in sunlight, which made Kathryn blink after the dark passageway. Kathryn remembered her father’s bringing her here years ago. Usually the chamber would be busy with merchants, aldermen, clerks and other officials of the city council, but now it was strangely deserted and the table at the far end empty.
‘Over here, Mistress Swinbrooke!’ a voice called out.
Kathryn looked towards the great fireplace. She saw four men sitting there. The nearest was an aged, venerable man; she glimpsed his gown of purple trimmed with costly fur. A clerk sat beside him, a writing-tray on his knee. On the other side of the fireplace she recognised Alderman John Newington, grey and lean as an ash pole. Beside him was a young man; Kathryn had the impression of long dark hair, hooded eyes and the sober bottle-green cloak, jacket and leggings of a soldier. All four rose as she walked tentatively towards them. Newington gestured at her to sit in a box-chair; a quilted stool stood beside it for Thomasina.
‘Mistress Kathryn, you are welcome.’
Newington looked nervous, his bald head shimmering with sweat. His eyes were wary and his face lined with exhaustion. A merchant of some standing, Newington had probably been spared from the general purge of the city by the Yorkists because, as her father had once drily remarked, Newington could never make his mind up what day of the week it was, never mind which policy to follow. Kathryn smiled at him as he fidgeted with his fur-trimmed gown. She took another look at the soldier beside Newington; he was ugly, his face long and swarthy, the chin aggressive, the eyes hooded, the nose too sharp and his lips rather harsh and set. A close, secretive man. If Kathryn had met him in an alley-way she would have been wary, thinking he was some outlaw or wolf’s-head.